Rishi Sunak's pledging to scrap degrees - and this time it's personal

"Why should my taxes subsidise you spending three years drawing pictures?", said one particularly galling comment on Twitter, as discussion raged below the headline: Rishi Sunak vows to shut down ‘Mickey Mouse*’ university courses.

One of the degrees explicitly mentioned in this crackdown? Comic Arts.

Now, the government has annoyed me in many and various ways over their 14-year tenure, but when you come for comics? This time it's personal.

Better opportunities for comics artists

At the Comics Cultural Impact Collective (CCIC) we're working to make the case for comics as a valuable industry that can enrich the UK, bring better employment opportunities to artists and offer mutual support to the network of dependent industries such as festivals, booksellers and tourism. With a fair wind behind us, we hope that in a few years' time, Comics Arts graduates will be emerging into a world ripe with possibilities, not just for earning money but for doing so via a fulfilling and highly skilled career.

And meanwhile? Yes, comics pay badly. That's one of CCIC's research findings too (though to be honest, it hardly takes Einstein to come to that conclusion).

People still make them, because to do so is richly rewarding both for creator and reader.

Comics create a better culture - for for everyone

I know this doesn't fit into the Tory worldview, but the value of a job is not always in its salary; it's in what it contributes to us all, as a society.

A world where universities can only run courses that put graduates into well-paid jobs would be a world of investment bankers, lawyers and property speculators; but what would those people read, watch or decorate their walls with, without the arts?

When we fund an arts course, we're investing in this nation's culture. We're ensuring that there will be stories and illustrations and beauty and expressiveness and questions and answers for the next generation as they face an increasingly stressful future.

Three years spent 'drawing pictures'? That person hasn't got it.

Drawing isn't a selfish pursuit: it's the giving of oneself. Reaching into one's own interior, grasping to express what it is to exist, to enrich our understanding of one another and the world we live in.

That's not just fun for the student (and, newsflash - it's not always fun): it's an investment, for all of us.

Comics are inclusive

When we fund comics degrees, we're investing in a fairer society, too. With CCIC's research showing that comics are created by a community that is more diverse in almost every metric, including neurodiversity, disability, minority ethnic and working class backgrounds, a cull of comics degrees is a door slammed shut in the face of those who already have least access to higher education.

In short, it's discriminatory and it means that the arts can only be pursued by those with the financial means to support themselves.

Art produced by the comfortably-off is rarely as meaningful or provocative as that produced by those who are struggling: it's the problem we've seen written out time and again by artists like Bryan Ferry or Damien Hirst who reach a level of fame and affluence and find they have little left to say.

Comics can change the world

As with this government's desire to clamp down on the nation's right to protest, it seems those in power are uncomfortably aware of the potential of the arts to vocalise dissent. They don't like it and they're going to stop you studying it.

A healthy country funds its culture

Universities must be properly funded. CCIC will speak vociferously against the closure of arts courses, and doubly so for comics.

One of our most urgent and essential jobs is to stamp out the lazy trope that comics are facile, childish and easy to make. Anyone who spends half a day reading some of the cream of this country's graphic novels - or putting pen to paper to make their own - will be disabused of that view in short order.

In short? We prescribe a session at the Graphic Novel Reading Room and perhaps a nice zine-making workshop for our incoming MPs. In the meantime, here's an idea - why not greet your incoming MP this July with a comic you've made?

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Footnote

*By 'Mickey Mouse', Sunak apparently means 'degrees whose graduates don't earn large salaries'. This seems particularly inappropriate, given that Disney is a standout example of a longlasting multi-million industry, but let's put that aside.